Press Release 2013

2013/Feb/15

Nitto Denko develops a new thermosetting thermal resistant encapsulation sheet for LED

Nitto Denko Corporation today announced that it developed a new encapsulation sheet for LED. The new product can contribute to a dramatic improvement of LED devices in terms of quality, reliability and productivity by replacing the conventional liquid-type encapsulation materials.

This innovation was a part of the company’s joint development efforts with IDEC Corporation, a leading manufacturer of automation and control products in Japan. A creative fusion of Nitto Denko’s new encapsulation sheet and IDEC’s longtime-nurtured production engineering expertise led to the development of a revolutionary LED component.

This achievement is expected to propel further development and market penetration of a wide range of next-generation LED lighting devices.

Product features

１）Enhanced reliability
Generally speaking, silicone-based encapsulation materials for LED are only available in a liquid form. Building on its proprietary technologies, Nitto Denko succeeded in turning its liquid thermosetting encapsulation resin into a gel-like sheet by utilizing a special silicone resin as a base. The sheet does not cause any damage to LED bonding wires when laminated onto LED devices, because of its gel-like, semi-hard property.
The sheet’s relatively small shrinking rate upon the completion of the thermosetting process also contributes to enhanced reliability.

２）Enhanced productivity
The sheet made it possible to encapsulate a large area at once and the whole encapsulation process is now greatly simplified because there is no need for setting up a “dam” to keep the liquid material in place. Compared to the conventional “potting” method with liquid encapsulation materials adopted at IDEC, the new sheet-encapsulation process requires only about one-ninth of the previously required time for completion.

３）Improved color consistency
In the conventional method with liquid encapsulation materials, it took a certain period of time until the liquid was completely set solid, so that the phosphor material inside the liquid sedimentate to the bottom in the process and they caused variation of a finished LED’s color. With Nitto Denko’s new encapsulation sheet, such concerns can be eliminated. In addition to lessened color variation by half (compared to IDEC’s conventional method), the skipping of blending and mixing steps contributed to the productivity enhancement.

４）Less-expensive initial investment
Thanks to the now simplified production process, only one-tenth of the initial capital investment is needed compared to the conventional production line. (Internal trial calculation)

The new LED component featuring Nitto Denko’s new sheet product

Sales plan

１）Product launch: January 2013
２）Application: LED devices encapsulation
３）Sales target: Six billion yen per year (as of fiscal year 2015)

In the optical device domain typified by LED, Nitto Denko offers a range of products such as transparent encapsulation materials. Against the background of increasing demand for reducing environmental load, the LED devices market is now rapidly growing. Nitto Denko will strive to succeed in this bullish market on a global basis by taking advantage of this newly-developed thermosetting thermal resistant encapsulation sheet for LED.